Session proposal for SHOT 2007.
This session explores technology’s role in blurring the boundaries between what we understand as natural and unnatural. It investigates how man-made environments and products become more “natural.” Instead of seeing nature and technology as diametrically opposed, or the environment as natural and technology as unnatural, this session posits an intertwined and mutually dependent relationship between the natural and the technological. The session aims to present some of the current research of the Envirotech SIG community which works to move the history of technology towards the environment-technology intersection. The different papers in the session deal with how landscapes and commodities are created, packaged, or presented as being natural, in ways that would only be possible using technology. They demonstrate different ways of creating and removing connections between technology and nature, making some associations invisible and others visible.
Due to overwhelming interest, this proposal is for a double session under the same general theme. See the next page of this document for a list of the papers. The sessions are sponsored by the Envirotech SIG.
The first session, called “Blurring the Boundaries I: Commodifying Nature,” contains four papers exploring the way certain products and landscapes have been harvested, engineered, packaged, branded, or marketed as more natural than others. In doing so, the papers direct our attention to the experience of the commodified “natural” and how this is mediated through technology.
The second session, called “Blurring the Boundaries II: Designing Ecosystems,” contains four papers dealing with the construction, reconstruction, and negotiations of landscapes and ecosystems. Our increasing technological abilities in creating efficient landscapes have changed ideas about nature and naturalness.
Participants
Blurring the Boundaries 1: Commodifying Nature
- “’Feel the Volcanicity!’ The imagined landscapes of bottled water,” Finn Arne Jørgensen, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
- “The Technological Consequences of Emancipation: Credit and the Calendar of Bright Tobacco Agriculture, 1865-1937,” Barbara Hahn, Texas Tech University
- “Cleaning with Coconuts: Plant-based chemistry, ‘green’ consumer products, and environmentalism as technological innovation,” Kristoffer Whitney, University of Pennsylvania
- “Engineering Greenspace for Public Health: Frederick Law Olmsted, Urban Parks, and the American Sanitary Reform Movement,” Rebecca Pinkus, University of Toronto
Blurring the Boundaries 2: Designing Ecosystems
- “Engineering Nature: The Souris River and the Production of Migratory Waterfowl,” Fred Quivik, Consulting Historian of Technology
- “Biosphere Reserves: Environment in the Age of its Technoscientific Reproduction,” Sabine Höhler, University of Hamburg
- “The USDA Forest Service Restoring Historic Ecosystems: The Savannah River Site,” Pam Mack, Clemson University
- “Creating New Nature: Engineered Wetlands,” Elizabeth Malone, Joint Global Change Research Institute